I managed to land the three basic expansions (+ Road to Legend) from a sale. Yay! As so far we've only played the first three quests from the basic box, it would be nice to continue them while using the AoD, WoD and ToI rules and additions. There's treachery values for the Vanilla box quests available in the expansion booklets, but are there some things I should be aware of when using them with basic quests? Especially the green sundered glyphs might be a real dealbreaker in some quests, or is it so?

Also I was wondering if I just add all the cards (that expansions tell me to add) to the OL deck before swapping any with treachery? Doesn't adding them all make the OL deck very thick and it almost impossible for me to exhaust the deck and get some conquest off the heroes?

Thanks.

Mordjinn said:

I don't think so. The corrupted glyphs are pretty cruel, but they have their tactical uses, especially if the Overlord player feels like he needs a little boost. And if you don't like them, you just don't use them, simple as that. I haven't played any of the basic quests with Feat cards, but based on my experience with WoD and AoD mixed in, the expansions don't add a whole lot, beyond treachery that is. I imagine Feat cards will play a more prominent role than most other things though, since they WILL be present and likely played, whereas a lot of other stuff is just MAYBE going to show up.

As long as you're using everything from each expansion that has things to offer, it should be fine.

Mordjinn said:

They do make the deck thicker, but not that much thicker. I mean, there's only like 9 of them or something, right? In my experience it doesn't significantly alter game balance.

12 to be exact. You pass from a 36-card deck to a 48-card deck. Don't worry about its thickness, you will still cicle through it. Most of the extra cards are a real threat for the heroes.

About possible rule problems: In the Well of Darkness first quest (Buried Alive) there is a known problem with the green glyph. Just don't put a green glyph at the end of the board (or your players will be extremely angry at you).

In the Altar of Despair, the continous action is introduced. However only the AoD quests use it, so you don't need to give each hero the order token when playing other quests. I would also recomend you to take out from the skill decks any skill that specificaly improvse the continous actions when playing quests others than AoD. And don't substitute the Leadership card from AoD unless playing AoD quests.

Other than that, I supose you should have no problem when adding all the components together.

You may want to add them little by little. Say one or two quests with only the core game stuff, one or two quests with all except feats and treachery and the rest with all. This work for the core-game quests, but the expansion quests assume you are using all the components from the begining.

Mordjinn said:

I'm not a Descent player with much experience but I've already did what you plan to do, so perhaps I have an insight that old school players don't have (they started with base game and added the expansions as they came out; I've got everything from the beginning).

These are the components we implemented and kept from the beginning:

- new Heroes (with exception of Arvel Worldwalker and Zyla, the first because of Feat card ability and the second because it's too unusual for the basic game)

- new Town Market cards

These are the components that were excluded from the beginning (not used because we thought they're not necessary right now):

- Feat cards

- new Overlord cards (because they feature monsters/rules/tiles that belong to expansions; we didn't want Kobolds or Apes in our base quests)

- new potions (Power, Invulnerability, Invisibility); related Treasure Caches allowed to choose a potion between Vitality and Health

- progressive action tokens (n/a)

These are the components banned after some games:

- Treachery Overlord cards: we saw that the Overlord got too much power with these few cards (Crushing Blow, Armor, Sloth, etc...). Some of them are really cruel, the Overlord smashed the Heroes thanks to some side effects of these cards, independently of the party's choices. I'm thinking how and when we can reconsider introducing customizable Overlord decks (perhaps only in a RtL campaign, where he must spend XP?). I know that when the party's got Gold items the Overlord then needs a boost to stay competitive; maybe adding Treachery cards later in the game (e.g. after depleting the Overlord deck once?)

- new Treasure cards: we noticed that the Treasure decks were diluted and that the expansion items were sometimes too powerful. Playing the base quests with the base items is better, IMO; it also avoids getting new abilities into play, while the monsters have no access to them (Daze, Bleed, Stealth, etc...).

- new Ability cards: some of the new abilities have an interesting flavour and many are useful, but it's better to save them for later use. Some of them are quite naive and inexperienced players won't use them consistently or effectively.

In general, adding too many options for both Overlord and Heroes from the beginning is not adviseable. I recommend you to gradually add components to the base game. Make some tests and then decide if you want to keep all or just something.

Remember that the game components added with expansions tend to gradually increase the power of the Overlord and of the Heroes. The only difference is that it's a lot simpler to become a skilled overlord than to put together an organized team of Heroes. When everybody has learned how to stay on the board, then it's time to increase difficulty with Treachery/new Overlord cards and to counterbalance it with better Treasures in the deck and, if needed, Feat cards.

Thanks for all for your replies. After discussing with my group about our future with Descent we decided to jump in from the deep end and start right away playing Road to Legend instead of trying out some expansion single quests first. Might be that we're in for a surprise, but since no one of us has played Descent more than the others or any advanced campaign, we will all be in it together.

Cheers!